Friday, November 07, 2008

For more than half a century before 1992, the Democratic party was actually two parties, even after the Civil Rights movement cleared the old-style segregationists and neo-dixiecrats from the party -- a national party and a southern one, a fact that created conservative governing majorities on numerous issues. What's more, both Clinton and Carter ran on platforms of bucking their party and its entrenched congressional majorities. For both these reasons and many others, what will begin in January is something this country hasn't really seen since the first half of the 20th century.

Might Tennessee Democrats have been trampled by the reactionary elements of the late 20th Century? Since there is nothing left for dixiecrat-inclined voters to grab in the national Democratic Party, might they be simply retreating to state-party Republicans and building a regressive beachhead in places like Tennessee against the return of progressivism that characterized the Democratic Party of FDR? Wasn't TNGOP's attention-grabbing antics a magnet for the worst elements let loose in American culture? Might states like Indiana, Virginia, North Carolina and Florida (and eventually Texas) be new realigned border states in a new cold civil war?